It flourished relatively briefly when farmers were dirt poor, almost literally, instead of agribusiness.
Now, anything entitled "people's" is automatically associated with communism and almost a century's worth of anti-communist propaganda. However, the people's part pre-dated the first Russian Revolution.
It is important to remember that, when Lincoln first ran for President, he mocked the Democratic Party as the party of the rich. And, of course, the Democratic Party was then the party of, among other things, the pro-slavery candidate and, later, the Ku Klux Klan. A bit over a century later, a Democratic President got the Civil Rights Act passed. In between, was a transition, as the parties almost swapped roles (or modern version of the roles). So we cannot read the words "Democrat" and "Republican" in the 1890s as we might read them today.
The People's Party, also known as the "Populists", was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1891 during the Populist movement (United States, 19th Century). It was most important in 1892-96, and then rapidly faded away. Based among poor, white cotton farmers in the South (especially North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas) and hard-pressed wheat farmers in the plains states (especially Kansas and Nebraska), it represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, railroads, and elites generally. It sometimes formed coalitions with labor unions, and in 1896 the Democrats endorsed their presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan. The terms "populist" and "populism" are commonly used for anti-elitist appeals in opposition to established interests and mainstream parties.
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By 1896, the Democratic Party took up many of the People's Party's causes at the national level, and the party began to fade from national prominence. In that year's presidential election, the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan, who focused (as Populists rarely did) on the free silver issue as a solution to the economic depression and the maldistribution of power. One of the great orators of the day, Bryan generated enormous excitement among Democrats with his "Cross of Gold" speech, and appeared in the summer of 1896 to have a good chance of winning the election, if the Populists voted for him.
The Populists had the choice of endorsing Bryan or running their own candidate. After great infighting at their St. Louis convention they decided to endorse Bryan but with their own vice presidential nominee, Thomas E. Watson of Georgia. Watson was cautiously open to cooperation, but after the election would recant any hope he had in the possibility of cooperation as a viable tool.<8> Bryan's strength was based on the traditional Democratic vote (minus the middle class and the Germans); he swept the old Populist strongholds in the west and South, and added the silverite states in the west, but did poorly in the industrial heartland. He lost to Republican William McKinley by a margin of 600,000 votes, and lost again in a rematch in 1900 by a larger margin.<9>
Fading fortunes
The effects of fusion with the Democrats were disastrous to the Party in the South. The Populist/Republican alliance which had governed North Carolina, the only state in which it had any success, fell apart. By 1898, the Democrats used a violently racist campaign to defeat the North Carolina Populists and GOP and in 1900 the Democrats ushered in disfranchisement.<10>
Populism never recovered from the failure of 1896. For example, Tennessee’s Populist Party was demoralized by a diminishing membership, and puzzled and split by the dilemma of whether to fight the state-level enemy (the Democrats) or the national foe (the Republicans and Wall Street). By 1900 the People’s Party of Tennessee was a shadow of what it once was<11>
In 1900, while many Populist voters supported Bryan again, the weakened party nominated a separate ticket of Wharton Barker and Ignatius L. Donnelly, and disbanded afterwards. Populist activists either retired from politics, joined a major party, or followed Eugene Debs into his new Socialist Party.
Reorganization
In 1904, the party was re-organized, and Thomas E. Watson was their nominee for president in 1904 and in 1908, after which the party disbanded again
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populist_Party_%28United_States%29The wiki goes on to analyze. I recommend reading all of it.
A people's party, and it was important for only four years. :banghead:
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